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Keeping kids active is a necessity when it comes to raising healthy and happy kids. Along with proper nutrition, teaching children to properly exercise, whether it be through outdoor play or organized sports, is an important role of parents. Though health classes can be taught at school, lifelong habits are born in the home. Here are some toys we recommend that will ensure children keeping active at home:

These hand trampolines for balls are a great way to get kids outside and running as they work on fine motor skills to keep the ball bouncing between players. For added fun, use water balloons to cool off during the summer!

Imaginations will soar with this awesome building kit! Children can create fun shapes to crawl through as they put their creativity to the test! This pod kit creates large, light-weight structures that can be kicked, spun, and thrown!

The Mega Fun Playhouse includes a basketball, miniature basketball hoop, ball pit, and tunnels for children to crawl through! It makes for hours of street-free play as children burn off some of that energy while stuck indoors.

With a stable base and bright colors, the Electronic Multi-Game Pogo Bouncer helps children with counting, memory, sound recognition, music and more as they use their muscles to bounce up and down! It’s a great way to keep active while learning with five electronic games.

Start kids learning lacrosse early as they fall in love with a sport requiring hand-eye coordination, team work, and plenty of physical fitness! Lacrosse is a great way to have fun in the back yard and hone skills for team play later on.

We hope you enjoyed our toy selection and have fun with your children as you take in the sunny vibes of spring! Don’t miss our outdoor activities Pinterest board for even more ideas.

It’s spring and with the sunny season comes plenty of opportunities for sand and water play. Whether you have a sand and water table or a sandbox outside, we have a few learning activities you can engage your children in to embrace spring time.

Sand and water tables provide added benefits, including the ability to bring outdoor elements inside when the weather isn’t cooperating! If you don’t have one yet and are considering what table would be best for your child, we have a few options we think you’ll enjoy:

4 Hands-on Activities for Spring!

1. Water Play! Bring it Onboard

What happens when objects are added to a floating jar boat? Children can compare the objects that sink their boats to objects that leave boats afloat.

Materials:

different weighted materials such as plastic or wooden spoons, rocks, fishing weights, corks and metal washers

plastic containers with lids, small plastic jars with lids

sand and water table or a large container filled with water

What to Do:

Float a closed plastic jar on the water in front of your children. Talk about floating. Ask, “Do you have toys that float in the bathtub? What happens when you push them down to the bottom? Let’s pretend this is a boat and see what it can carry without sinking.”

Remove the lid and place a large, heavy object in the jar. Say, “Let’s see what happens when we bring this onboard our boat.” The object should not be heavy enough to sink the jar, though it should make it noticeably lower in the water. Talk to your children about why.

Select a heavier object that will sink the jar. Repeat the process of placing the jar in the water and discussing what happens when the boat sinks.

Allow children to explore with several more objects and containers. Ask, “Which objects let the jar boat float and what sinks the boat?” Have children group the objects in these two categories and discuss size, weight, and material characteristics of the objects in the groups.

Challenge: Do the activity using only sand or water as a weight. Add varying amounts to identical jars. How much does it take to sink the jar? Challenge your children to keep track of how many scoops of sand they put in the jars.

2. Water Play! Aluminum Foil Boats

Make boats from aluminum foil, and experiment with how to make them float and carry objects!

Related Books:

Boats by Anne Rockwell

Gumpy’s Outing by John Burningham

Who Sank the Boat? by Pamela Allen

Materials:

objects used as “passengers” or cargo in the boats, such as small plastic blocks, washers, or pennies

pieces of aluminum foil: 6” x 6” squares work well, but any size and shape can be used

sand and water table or a tub of water

What to Do:

Talk with your child about what the word sink means. What might make a boat sink?

Show your child a flat sheet of foil and a small toy. Talk about how you might make the foil into a boat so that the toy can ride in it.

Create several boats, experimenting with different designs and testing each boat in the tub of water. Add animals or other toys to see what happens.

Talk about your boats and what you noticed when you put “passengers” in each boat. Does it make a difference where you put the passengers? Can some boats carry more passengers than others? Does the shape or size of the boat make a difference?

Test your ideas about boat designs by redesigning and floating many different boats.

Kaplan Toys Suggestion: Looking for items to float in your boat? Try out My Buddies, the perfect companions for water play!

3. Sand Play! Dinosaur Dig

Children will learn about colors and paleontologists as they dig for dinosaurs!

Materials:

laminating machine or clear contact paper in different colors

sand and water table or tub of sand

scissors

Preparation:

Cut dinosaur shapes out of different colored paper. Laminate or cover with clear contact paper.

Hide the paper dinosaurs in the sand.

What to Do:

Tell children that they are going to be a special kind of scientist called a paleontologist. Explain what they study and the history of life on Earth.

If appropriate, ask each child to find a certain color dinosaur.

Offer an additional challenge by cutting the dinosaur shapes into puzzle pieces that the children find and then put together, just as paleontologists put together the bones they find to re-create the bone structure of animals that once lived on our planet.

Have fun showing children how to paint sand, and then mix the sands to form new colors!

Materials:

containers for mixing sand and paint

pans for drying sand (one for each color)

resealable plastic bags, small

sand and water table full of sand

spoons

tempera paints

mixing spoons

permanent marker

Preparation:

Collect several containers of white sand, various tempera paints, and find a location where children can set the painted sand out to dry.

Have each child make a color of sand using separate containers to mix each of the primary colors—red, yellow and blue.

Help each child measure and pour 1-2 cups of sand into each container, and then pour 1/4 cup of wet or dry tempera paint into the containers. Explain to the children that they should add 1/2 cup of water for each cup of sand in their containers. Help children add water and paint as needed to help make a good rich color and a runny mixture. Mix well.

Help children pour the colored sand onto the sand and water table to dry, and then place the table in a warm, sunny place. When the sand is dry, encourage the children to crumble the sand back into granular form. At this point, each child should have one container of red, yellow, and blue sand.

Next, talk with children about the primary colors. Ask the children why they think we call them primary and explain that they help to make all other colors.

Set out several mixing spoons and resealable plastic baggies. Invite the children to use the spoons to measure the colored sands carefully and combine spoonfuls of each in various plastic baggies. Tell children to use no more than three spoonfuls of each color of sand. Be sure children mix one or two spoonfuls of color with three spoonfuls of another color, so that they can see a variety of results.

Help children record on the sides of the baggies the number of spoonfuls of each color of sand they add to each baggie, and then help the children seal the baggies.

Invite the children to shake the bags well to mix the colored sand and watch as a new, secondary color appears. Point out to the children how the grains of the primary colors are still visible in the secondary color.

April is National Poetry Month! Teaching poetry to toddlers can be hard, especially when it’s not your favorite writing style or particularly easy to understand! Rhyming schemes, however, can provide a fun introduction to early literacy skills and can get kids up and moving if paired with movement. Keep your kids engaged with four fun ways to teach poetry at home:

1. Flower Poetry

Celebrate the season by teaching poetry with flowers! Simply draw an outline of different types of flowers with enough room on each petal for children to write words and an original poem in the center. Give different instructions for each flower and let kids’ creativity do the rest!

Ideas for flower petals:

alliteration (“soft as blankets” or “sweet as candy”)

spring simile (“dancing daffodil” or “buzzing bees”)

adjectives (“fragrant flowers” or “beautiful blossoms”)

The results will leave you with inspiring flowers to hang on your walls at home!

Extra: Read Grandpa’s Garden for an adorable story to go along with your poetry activity!

2. Seasonal Poetry

Kids already love to write poetry, even if they don’t know it yet! The best way to get them more involved is by including artwork as part of their poetry project. This allows a visual representation of language exploration. Spring is one of the most inspiring seasons as it offers bright colors, lovely weather, and the appearance of all types of flowers and animals. Sit your children down and brainstorm a list of words they associate with spring. Place the list somewhere visible in the room so children can refer to it as they write. Here are three poetry forms that are easy to teach and fun to personalize:

Acrostic:

Sunny weather to play in

Purple flowers galore

Raindrops watering the flowers

I get to play outside

Nests of baby birds

Gardens feed my tummy

Ode (A poem to honor someone or something):

“Oh, spring!

We have missed you.

The rainbow of colors

you sprout from the ground.

The sprinkle of showers

giving us puddles for splashing.

Planting our gardens,

we can’t wait for vegetables to come!”

Haiku (five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables):

“Beautiful flowers

Growing up for us to see

Rainbow spattering”

For even more inspiration for sounds of the seasons to incorporate in children’s poetry, check out the board book Listen, Listen.

3. Color Poetry

Do you have the Dr. Seuss book My Many Colored Days? It is a great book for inspiring color poetry! The master of rhymes, Dr. Seuss, already sets the stage for falling in love with poetry with words like:

“Oh bright red days,

how good it feels

to be a horse

and kick my heels!”

Start by asking your child about things that are color specific before they start writing. Use questions like:

What is Orange?

What does Red remind you of?

How do you feel when you see yellow?

Then list each color with the following format:

Orange is…

Yellow is…

Green is…

Children can then complete each sentence with a phrase they associate with the color. The result will be quite the colorful poem!

4. Reading Poetry to Promote Early Literacy

Just by listening as you read different poems, children develop word recognition. This is a fun way for children to appreciate poetry as a storytelling form and learn the sounds of letters as they listen to rhymes and word play. It will also provide plenty of examples should they venture into writing their own!

Here are a few places you can find free poetry to read to your toddlers:

Have you already started building your home library to celebrate Library Week? If not, we have some great tips for getting started in this previous blog post. Once you have decided what books will go where and what topics your children are most interested in, the next consideration should be environment. We have a couple of suggestions that are sure to leave your kids excited for reading time. Here are a few things to consider as a parent building your child’s home library:

Solid Seating

Children have to have somewhere comfortable to sit if you’re going to convince them to sit for extended periods of time. No matter how interesting the book is, if a child’s environment is not engaging enough, he or she will most likely end up carrying the book to an environment in which they are more accustomed, such as a bedroom. We have a few seating options we think will put your children at ease while surrounded by their favorite books:

Organization Station

If your library is going to feel like home, then there has to be a system of organization in place! Be sure to explain on the first day you introduce your children to the library how the books are organized—are they sorted by color, size, author, or genre? Use whatever system makes most sense for your family and be sure to hold each “borrower” accountable for replacing books where they found them. Finally, if your children are taking books outside of the home for road trips or across the street to a friends’ house, make sure you keep track of which books are “checked-out.” We have some handy Library Cards, Colored Library Pockets, and Home Reading Logs that will allow you to do just that:

Vamp up Variety

Books aren’t the only things libraries have to offer to eager learners. Give your children options when they choose how they want to learn. Reading books can many times be supplemented by sensory experiences for little hands, puppets for dramatic play, and even art expression for drawing pictures of the characters children fall in love with. Here are a few options for including a little variety in your library:

Puppet Play

Art Expression

Practice Communication

Finally, communication is an important life skill to foster in little ones and there’s no better place to begin than in the library! Make sure you keep a daily message board where children can check for home news. Do you want help with the evening’s dinner? Have your children find their favorites recipes in the library! Want to do a scavenger hunt? Leave a message asking children to find a specific book to add a little fun to their reading time while also making sure they understand how the books are organized. The possibilities are endless! Here are some effective ways to communicate in your library:

Keeping your little ones entertained for spring can be a challenge, but with such great weather, so many inspiring colors, and the opportunity to play outside, there are plenty of fun art projects you can do together to celebrate the season! Here are some of our favorite activities that will not only encourage color exploration but also give you adorable pieces to put on display in your house:

2. Watering Can

Gardeners will love this watering can made from a liquid laundry soap jug and markers.

Before Beginning

-Cut off the top portion of the jug, along the top ridge and just above the handle. Soak bottle in water to remove labels.

Materials:

Liquid laundry detergent jug

Sharp scissors or utility knife (adult only)

Nontoxic permanent markers

Hole punch

What to Do:

Decorate the outside of the watering can with nontoxic permanent markers. Create a colorful picture or design.

Fill the watering can with homemade flowers, or fill the container with dirt, and plant flowers or flower seeds inside.

Variation:

Roll up pieces of tape, and use them to attach flat plastic stencil shapes to the outside of the watering can. Apply nontoxic permanent marker in a zigzag motion around the edge of the stencils. Remove the stencils, and add detail to the shape outlines.

Helpful Hints:

Save cut-off tops for funnels to use in sand and water play.

A utility knife works well for cutting off bottle tops, but be careful! (Utility knives are for adult use only.)

Use Teflon scrapers or scrub brushes to remove residue from labels. This is fun to do outside in a tub of water.

Use scraps of wallpaper, tissue paper, construction paper, and pipe cleaners to create a unique bouquet of flowers to place in the watering can.

It’s finally spring and with the change in seasons comes more opportunities for young children to get out and enjoy some fresh air. There are plenty of games to play outside, but the best ones inspire children’s creativity as they act out dramatic play. We have a few ways your child can enjoy the sunshine while also using their imaginations to transform into something new! Without further ado, here are four dramatic play games for spring:

1. Better Fly, Butterfly!

There’s nothing more magical than the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly! Have your children act out the transformation with their very own set of wings. The wings are a great addition to books full of early science learning, such as From Caterpillar to Butterfly and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and will help children become more invested in the stories being read.

2. Get Your Grill On!

Since March is National Nutrition Month, encourage your child to pretend to make their favorite healthy foods on the Pretend Play BBQ Grill. The grill is a great way to teach children proper nutrition and build fine motor skills as children let their imaginations flourish, combining all of their favorite ingredients! (Even if they probably wouldn’t work so well in real life!) For a book of simple recipes you can cook together with your toddler in the real kitchen after playtime, don’t miss The Budding Chef.

Trying to promote business skills in your children while also not feeling like you’re stripping away the joy of childhood can be a real balancing act. However, many of the skills used in the office can be easily integrated into children’s everyday play. Here are four simple strategies you can focus on to raise budding business leaders while also having fun at the same time:

1. Promote financial literacy early on.

Understanding that items have value is an important life skill that children must grasp to succeed down the road. Encouraging financial literacy in the home can take many forms, but here are a few of our favorites:

Make Money! Series: Read about kids in true-to-life stories that teach how to work through trial and error to pursue business plans. The series includes washing cars, pet sitting, yard work, and running a lemonade stand! The books are a great way to give children ideas about their own business.

Teach personal responsibility by offering children ways to earn income so that they can save for future purchases. This could include chores, running a lemonade stand, or even opening a bank account to save birthday money.

Focus on goal setting. Encourage the exploration of future business ideas and how they can see those ideas come to fruition through investment, savings, and hard work. Be sure you’re also celebrating when those goals are met!

2. Accept failure as a part of the learning process.

Children are going to face failures at one point or another; preparing them for it early on is a great way to teach future business skills. Many times schools teach failure as a bad thing, whereas at home, you can encourage your children to view them as chances to grow! When your child makes a mistake, take time to sit down with him or her to discuss which factors led to the failure and then brainstorm ways to prevent it from happening again. Seeing opportunity is a great alternative to dwelling in despair and will help children when they face obstacles in the future.

3. Give children the opportunity to lead.

Being put in a position of leadership is a great way for children to practice effective communication, work toward a common goal, and listen to ideas from others. Invite children’s peers to your house and allow your child to lead in sports, book clubs, or small business projects. Playing host will make children accustomed to leading others. Also, encouraging small token acts, like giving a small toast before family birthday parties or dinners, can give children practice in public speaking.

4. Teach children how to give back.

One important lesson of being a business leader is knowing how to give back to both the employees and the community. Encourage your children to think about how their business can better the lives of others. Part of being a successful business owner is being humble enough to allow great successes to provide benefits to more than just the owner. Volunteering is a great way to allow children to develop the characteristic of helping others. The Busy Family’s Guide to Volunteeringis a great tool for getting started. For even more ideas on how to make time to get your children involved in the community, check out this related blog post: http://blog.kaplantoys.com/2014/08/19/3-tips-for-finding-time-to-volunteer-as-a-family/

We want to hear from you! How do you promote early business skills in your children? Share by commenting below or on our Facebook page.